Ultimate Flatpicking Exercises! Develop insane speed, accuracy and smoothness in your playing

Hey friends, Aaron Jaxon coming to you today for another bluegrass flatpicking lesson today. And what I've got for you today are a couple of really cool picking exercises that you can use to develop your right hand technique, or left hand technique if you're a left-handed player. And because I get a lot of questions about the picking technique in this style, and these are just 3 fairly simple exercises that if you'll just incorporate this into your daily practice routine, I think you'll get a lot out of it. And I think that when you go to practice, you know, fiddle tunes or solos or things of that nature, I think you'll find they're a little bit easier by doing this. As always, hit the link in the description to get the tabs and in the top pinned comment. Let's jump into it here. So this first one is, is just gonna go like this.

We're gonna do—

okay, rudimentary as that may seem, I promise you that that's valuable because what we're practicing there is crosspicking. And all crosspicking is, is we're doing alternate picking, but we're doing it across adjacent strings. So I'm going down on the 4th string, up on the 3rd string, down on the 2nd string, up on the 3rd string. So it's, it's the same thing as if I was doing alternate picking on one string, just one end to the end, but I'm stretching those pick strokes out across the strings. And that really helps develop your accuracy, which translates into your picking technique being a lot cleaner and a lot smoother.

So one more time there, just—

it sounds like Sing Me Back Home by Merle Haggard. All right, so, so there's that, just down, up, down, up on the 4th 3rd, 2nd, and 3rd strings down. So, but the thing about it is, I mean, just sitting around practicing that, valuable as that is, can get a little tedious and a little monotonous. So I want to give you something that will make this exercise a little bit more musical here, and it's going to go like this. We're gonna do Now, as far as your picking hand goes, all we're going to do is, is exactly what we were doing on that other exercise there. It's just down, up, down, up. That's all we do. But we're going to go through this little— and so what I'm fretting there are, um, I'm fretting the, um, 4th and 2nd strings, okay? And I'm leaving the 3rd string open, and I'm coming up here and doing that on the 12th fret. I'm sliding that down 2 frets to the 10th fret, and then I'm going to do middle 9th fret of the 4th, index 8th fret of the 2nd. I'm going to take this shape down, I'm going to move everything down 2 frets, so middle's now on 7th fret of the 4th and pointer fingers on the 6th fret of the 2nd. And then we're gonna do 5th fret of the 4th, 5th fret of the 2nd. Slide that down 2 more frets, and then we're gonna do middle on the 2nd, pointer on the 1st, almost kind of like we're doing like a kind of an incomplete C chord. And then we'll end it right here. Okay, so we'll do Okay, so again, but all your picking hand is doing through that is just down, up, down, up. But we're doing it across those adjacent strings, and so we're developing some really, really good accuracy, which is going to translate into some really clean picking. Okay, so that's one way of doing this. Let me show you a variation on this, um, this cross picking exercise. I'm going to show you a variation on it. And for this one, um, well, I'll tell you what, I'll just do the open strings here first.

It's going to go like this. We're going to do—

yeah, this is what I was playing at the very beginning of the video. Um, and so with this exercise, think of it like this: we're going to do down on the 4th, up on the 3rd, down on the 2nd, and then we're going to come back and we're going to do up on the 4th, down on the 3rd, up on the 2nd. So again, down on the 4th, up on the 3rd, down on the 2nd. Now let's swing back and do up on the 4th, down on the 3rd, up on the 2nd.

All right, so that's gonna—

so that little jump when we do on the 4th, 3rd, 2nd, and then jump back to the 4th with an upstroke, that, that's a challenging move there. And again, like I was saying earlier, that's gonna develop your picking hand accuracy. Down, up, down, up, down, up. And what we're gonna do, do that twice. We're gonna do down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up.

Okay, so we're gonna do, but we're not done quite yet.

All right, so down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up. And then we're going to do— after that, we're gonna do down on the 4th, down on the 3rd, down on the 2nd, up on the 3rd. Okay, so we're gonna do that first pattern twice.

We're going to do down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, and then down, up, down, up.

Okay, okay, so let's try that pattern all the way through one more time here.

It's going to go like this.

We'll do All right, so it just almost gives it a little bit of a banjo roll feel when we're playing it that way. And it's also just got some— just a couple of really good moves that are great for developing your picking accuracy. But again, just playing that over and over and over again super valuable, but it can get a little tedious and a little monotonous here. So let me show you a pattern that you can play this through here. So we'll start with this one, um, and that is, uh, ring finger 5th fret of the 4th string, pointer finger 3rd fret of the 2nd string. I'm leaving the 3rd string open, and we'll do— and then let's move up here which is— we played this shape a minute ago in the other example, but with this one, middle finger 7th fret of the 4th string, pointer finger 6th fret of the 2nd, and we'll do the same thing with our picking hand, the exact same thing. And then just move this up, move everything up 2 frets, and then let's jump up here to the 12th fret, middle finger 12th fret of the 4th string, ring finger 12th fret of the 2nd string.

We'll do—

okay, so that whole thing there, we'll do—

okay.

Again, okay, which those are some similar shapes again to the first example that I was playing, but that just, that just helps break up the, break up the repetitiveness there. Okay, it's very David Greer sounding. He's kind of the king of this stuff. That's just a great thing to practice for your picking hand. So I've got one more exercise that I want to show you here, and the concept is really, really simple, but the execution of it is kind of challenging. Just make a G chord. And then we're going to just down and up on the 6th string, and then go to the 4th string, do the same thing, down and up. 5th string down and up. 3rd string down and up. 4th string down and up. 2nd string down and up. 3rd string down and up. 1st string down and up.

Okay, so that's—

all right, one more time. And then we're just going to do the exact same thing in reverse. We'll start on that 4th string.

We'll do— let me try it again here.

Okay, so the whole thing there. Okay, again, we'll do— okay, so again, we're really just going through and picking each string on that G chord, but we're skipping a string every time that we do it. So 6, 4, 5, 3, 4, 2, 3, 1, 1, 3, 2, 4, 3, 5, 4, 6. Okay, and we're doing that down and up every time. So as we're skipping, we're skipping a string every time we do that, and our hand is also having to go from the 6th string through the 1st and back down again. Okay, so, and then one other variation to that there, if you really wanted to give yourself a good workout here, is instead of starting it with a downstroke, start it with an upstroke.

So up, down, up, down.

All right, one more time. Okay, so there's 3, um, picking exercises that you can incorporate into your practice routine, um, that I think you'll get a lot out of. I think it will really help you to develop your picking hand accuracy, and it'll make your technique smoother and cleaner and faster and all of that good stuff that we're chasing here. Um, I, I guess one other thing, or two other things I wanted to end with here, and I'll try not to be long-winded. Um, all the time people are asking me like, like, can you explain like why you hold your pick the, uh, the way that you do? And I hold my pick for the way that I do for one reason, one reason only. It is the only way, um, that feels natural, that feels comfortable to me, which I know is weird because it's very weird looking the way that I hold. I have an unorthodox way of doing it because I'm technically left-handed. I'm actually left-handed, but I play right-handed. So I think that results in a kind of weird way of doing it. Um, but I just— what I'm finding with a lot of my students, with a lot of the comments that I get on social media and here on YouTube and from, you know, the people that have picked up my online courses, I think way, way, way too many people are spending way too much time obsessing over that thing. Y'all, there is not a one-size-fits-all approach to this. There just isn't. There isn't. There is not a one orthodox way of doing this. You have to figure out what works for you. And if that means you need to, you know, brace a finger or two down here, I think that's fine. If you're kind of touching the bridge pin over here, fine. If you're just kind of leaving it floating like this and not touching anything, that's great too. I think the big thing though, and this is something you'll hear pretty much all the great players talk about, is you want to try to eliminate tension from your picking hand as much as possible. So, you know, whenever I'm doing that, that little exercise out of G, that I'm always trying to minimize the tension in my picking hand. I do— that should not sound like this. It shouldn't be You hear the difference? I'm technically playing the same notes, but—

and not—

okay, for, for a couple of reasons. I mean, number one, just that, that staccato way, that just doesn't sound very good. But also it restricts my hand's range of motion whenever I'm doing it that way. And, um, so, so that's the big thing is you want as best as you can to try to eliminate tension from your picking hand. And honestly, just bringing awareness to that will, um, will go a long way in helping you to eliminate or minimize the tension to a certain extent there. So, so that's the thing, you, you've got to find what works for you, and what works for you is not going to be the exact same thing or it might not be the same thing as what works for me or as what works for any of the other great bluegrass players. It works for, you know, Jake Workman or Brian Sutton or Billy Strings or Doc Watson or Tony Rice. You've got to find what works for you. We're all wired a little bit different. Um, so yeah, find what works for you. Eliminate tension, but then also realize that, that chops, technique, skill is built with practice. It's built with a ton of practice. So anyway, all right, well, I really hope that these, uh, that these exercises will help you, and I hope that you can incorporate those into your daily practice routine to really, um, you know, develop some, some accuracy, some fluidity, and some smoothness, um, into your picking. So again, hit the link down in the description or in the top pinned comment to get the tabs for these examples. And, uh, yeah, I'll see you next time.